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Changing with the times

Changing with the times

Checking into the airport or packing the car for a recruiting trip has gotten much easier for college coaches in the past 15 years.

Instead of lugging around video tapes — both blank ones to pass out for recording and highlight tapes they’ve already received — college recruiters have access to all the video they need right at their fingertips.

“Especially in the last three or five years, things have really changed dramatically (with video),” Rouse football coach Joshua Mann said. “Even seven or eight years ago, you were still burning and copying DVDs and headed to the post office. Now you just send a link.”

The internet, particularly YouTube and Hudl, sparked that change.

YouTube was founded in 2005 and a quick search on “football recruiting” or “high school basketball highlights” instantly pulls up more than 32,000 hours of video. Hudl does the same thing but streamlines the process for athletes.

“Hudl really made everything different,” Leander school district athletic director Chris Ross said. “YouTube makes it really easy to share videos, while Hudl captured a market that needed its own video database and made it really easy.”

Hudl was founded in 2006 and offers services that make it easy for coaches and athletes to share video and create highlight tapes — something that often required an individual paid service a couple years ago.

Technology has also changed how coaches and recruiters can interact, something that caught Mann’s attention when a couple college coaches direct messaged him on Twitter about potential prospects.

“That kind of shocked me; I’m new to the whole Twitter thing, and that was unexpected,” he said. “I’ve actually gotten a couple direct messages recently about who recruiters should look at.”

While Twitter and social media may help some kids reach the next level, it can also be dangerous when student-athletes don’t think before they post.

“If kids don’t think college coaches are looking at their Facebook , Twitter or Instagram, then they’re crazy,” Cedar Ridge head football coach Todd Ford said. “That coach wants to know as much about you as possible, and what you post could be the only difference between you and another recruit.”